Adidas

German sportswear group Adidas plans to slash the number of products it offers by a quarter to improve its profitability, Chief Executive Herbert Hainer told a newspaper. "We just have too many products," Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung quoted Hainer as saying in an excerpt of an interview to be published on Saturday. He said Adidas offers almost 47,000 different products. Adidas aims to grow its sales to 17 billion euros ($22.21 billion) and improve its operating margin to 11 percent by 2015...

BERLIN, March 7 (Reuters) - Adidas, the world's second largest sports apparel firm, reported an unexpected loss in the fourth quarter, with results hit by writedowns linked to the weak performance of Reebok. The group, which competes with Nike and Puma in the highly competitive market for soccer gear and running shoes, said Thursday it made a fourth quarter operating loss of 239 million euros, compared with analyst expectations for profit of 28.6 million. It took a...

BERLIN (Reuters) - With Adidas sponsoring both teams in Sunday's World Cup final, the German sportswear brand has declared victory over U.S. rival Nike in the latest round of its battle to remain the biggest global soccer brand. The two companies dominate a soccer kit industry worth more than $5 billion a year, sharing more than 80 percent of the market for many products, but Nike has been threatening Adidas' leadership, including in its home territory of western...

LONDON (Reuters) - U.S. sportswear company Nike will not renew a long-running kit supply deal with English football club Manchester United because of the cost of a new contract, a source with knowledge of the negotiations said. Nike has been supplying United's famous red shirts since 2002 but the current agreement expires next year. Its withdrawal is expected to clear the way for the club to sign a lucrative new deal with German sportswear company Adidas. "Clearly...

ESPN.com reports: T-shirts featuring injured Louisville guard Kevin Ware's No. 5 are no longer being sold by Adidas because of a "logo issue," a Louisville spokesman said. Louisville had said it was waiving Adidas' royalties for the shirt, which read "Rise to the Occasion" with the No.5 replacing the "s" in "Rise," and had said Adidas would make contributions to the university's scholarship fund. Get the full story: ESPN.com

FRANKFURT, Dec 3 (Reuters) - German sporting goods maker Adidas confirmed its 2015 targets for sales of 17 billion euros ($23 billion) and an operating profit margin of 11 percent. The medium-term targets of the world's second largest sportswear maker behind Nike had come under scrutiny in recent weeks after it warned on 2013 profit in September. "We will again accelerate our growth and focus on profitability to achieve our targets," Adidas Chief Executive ...

MANAUS Brazil (Reuters) - Reaction to the nine-match ban imposed on Thursday by FIFA on Uruguay forward Luis Suarez for biting. Uruguayan Football Association president Wilmar Valdez: "We are going to appeal today ... there isn't definitive evidence that allows us to say that this kind of sanction can be applied. We are talking nine games, four months and a financial penalty, so to me it really seems like a completely exaggerated and abusive sanction. "FIFA vice-president...

By JÃ rn Poltz MUNICH (Reuters) - German sportswear company Adidas has given a more precise sales growth target for 2014, amounting to a rise of up to 8 percent, as it gets a lift from the soccer World Cup that starts in Brazil next month. As a World Cup sponsor, Adidas provides the official match ball and is kitting out nine teams of the 32 finalists, including former world champions Spain, Germany and Argentina. "This year we will add 1-1.2 billion euros ($1.4-1.6 billion)

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Adidas AG's failure to narrow the market share gap with rival sportswear maker Nike Inc means shareholders should refuse to back the German company's management, a top investor was quoted as saying. Ingo Speich, a fund manager with Union Investment, told German weekly Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung the company had failed to narrow the gap with Nike and he had lost confidence in management as a result. "Even at home, in Germany as well as...